4 ms·

I don't know. In the US you get 20 years of protection from a patent from time of filing. If somebody beats you to it, you don't. This means that a lot of tech

by ci5er 11y ago

I don't know. In the US you get 20 years of protection from a patent from time of filing. If somebody beats you to it, you don't. This means that a lot of tech filings are going to be pre-commercial. This means that once on the market, it will need to be tested by the market. Once the market decides that it is a better/faster/cheaper tool than the competitive product/process/genome, you've got, what, 7~10 years? Maybe? So, during this window, if you over price it, it isn't better/faster/cheaper. If it is priced competively, people benefit. The only "losers" are those that have to wait 10 years to rip off your research and clone your product and undersell you. What's the problem here?

dave_sullivan 11y ago
Sure, so instead of messing with messy market risk, better to patent first and not commercialize. Then sue the hell out of anyone that tries (or bury whatever the idea behind the patent, because I filed the patent, so if I can't have it, fuck 'em. It's my natural right.) Then, start a fund that simply buys the patents and "defends them" because I can get investors a 15% return from legal extortion (as opposed to illegal extortion which is higher risk/higher reward and less scalable.) Those investors will make me rich and give me lots of cool inventor awards and fancy dinners, so it all looks super legit. And make sure to hire lobbyists, because they're pretty good at making sure a good thing doesn't die.
- ci5er 11y ago
  Step 1: Be Nathan Myhrvold? The world is certainly moving more quickly than it used to, and maybe 20 years is too long for patent protection. The alternative to utilization of a patented technology is to keep doing what you have been doing. Many people certainly do. The the patent expires about 10 years (or less) from the time the technology is made available to the market. Is that a problem? Seriously - I don't know. It doesn't seem to be (to me), but maybe the timeline is too long?
  - dave_sullivan 11y ago
    Yes, it's a problem because it causes artificial distortions on the market due to the technology not being available widely. You could argue the patent gets assigned it's fair market value because it is offered to license, but monopolies do not price well. It has nothing to do with "protecting the little guy" and in fact protects no one except for non-violent gangsters. You pay them for protection, the courts pay for their protection, and technological progress slows down because engineering around patents becomes a thing. Look: if you're pro-patents, fine, just realize how the money machine works. In practice, it's about making money and maintaining the power to do so, nothing deeper than that.
    - ci5er 11y ago
      I don't know. If they priced it at $1B per use, and nobody bought it, it would still be available for 3rd party replication 10 years after it hit the market. This isn't right topic thread for this discussion; I apologize.
    - z3t4 11y ago
      If there was no patent system, you would keep all your ideas and research secret. And that would hinder advances in science, as people would keep discoveries to themselves.
      - hackuser 11y ago
        > If there was no patent system, you would keep all your ideas and research secret. And that would hinder advances in science, as people would keep discoveries to themselves. What about all the open knowledge and technology, such as most of what's published in scientific journals? Was Einstein's physics research hindered because he didn't patent relativity? Watson and Crick? Norman Borlaug? Think of all the open source computer innovations that have been given away and continue to be (are you excited about Rust?).
datashovel 11y ago
I agree that it seems, by today's standards, a non-issue. And in reality perhaps it is just my active imagination that is the enemy here. Although I would posit that though 7-10 years seems like a reasonable timeframe to most people today, it will probably appear to be a lifetime to future generations. If you really think about it, how long do Cell Phones last on the market before they're no longer a threat commercially? If I had to put a number to it I'd say no more than 1 year. After that you better have something new, and hopefully patented to prevent competition. Now amplify that by 2x, maybe 3x, or 10x. Now perhaps only the patent holder has legal rights to experiment on a given range of problems (given the nature of the patent). I imagine if someone plays their cards right, and hits the "patent lottery", you end up with a "waterfall-effect", or in other words, centuries worth of patents by a single entity with no end in sight. Perhaps those in the field recognize that biology is just as diverse if not more diverse than most other fields. And my concern could be a red herring. I, personally, have no doubt that the field of biology is enormously diverse, and in most academic settings I'd consider this pretty much a non-issue. I think the over-arching fear is the US has nominated 9 people, none of whom are likely to know a significant amount about genetic engineering, to decide (in essence) the fate of genetic engineering and the "patentability" of specific inventions / discoveries. What I think the field of genetic engineering may need in its future, is the equivalent of a Linus Torvalds in their field. Someone who will cut through the BS, and donate the overwhelming majority of their work / research to the public domain to prevent or reduce the possibility of some calamitous scenario from unfolding.
- ci5er 11y ago
  The 20-years-from-file is a recent change. It used to be 17-years-from-grant. The timelines can be dealt with statutorily. I have no doubt that large amounts of biological data will be freely available to the market. And many foundational techniques (such as PCR, and now CRISPR) have quite a long useful lifespan. It isn't as if digital cellular telephony wasn't known before Nokia, just that some vendors (Motorola) misjudged and stuck with analog too long after the cost calculus changed. You raise an interesting question about waterfall effects. I'll have to ponder this some. In any case, say this does happen - the patent holder gets very rich (fairly or not) and the world gets a constant stream of always better innovative biotech. I don't understand how the world suffers whether the beneficiary of the dollar flow is one entity or a hundred.
spb 11y ago
> So, during this window, if you over price it, it isn't better/faster/cheaper. If it is priced competively, people benefit. The only "losers" are those that have to wait 10 years to rip off your research and clone your product and undersell you. I'm pretty sure this is why we're only seeing consumer VR now, despite the fact that we had most of this technology in 1995. Patent-wise, it wasn't safe to rip off until now. This is also (again, I suspect) why the current input situation is so underwhelming: anything exciting is going to reply on technology developed in the last 10 years that the R&D firms are pricing at self-defeatingly high cost.
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  We're seeing VR now because smartphones have made the access to small HD screens abundant and relatively cheap.
  - Ankaios 11y ago
    And accelerometers & gyros. Also processors & GPUs, as my uncle comment sent. All of these being cheap and high quality is why personal VR currently has a shot at happening.
- ci5er 11y ago
  Maybe. An SGI Workstation level device that fits in the palm of your hand and costs <$30,000 may have something to do with it. I don't think that this is necessarily evil patent squatting stuff. I was at Motorola for a while in the 90s, we looked at the patent landscape - knew how to go around them - and we just couldn't make the numbers work for a consumer play.
hackuser 11y ago
> Once the market decides that it is a better/faster/cheaper tool than the competitive product/process/genome, you've got, what, 7~10 years? Maybe? This assumes the "market" makes a good decision. It's not a God, it's just tool. Like any tool, it works well in some situations and not in others. One thing it's not good at is allocating resources based on need rather than on wealth. What about the people who need the product but can't afford it? What about the innovations that are delayed, and the innovations based on those innovations, and all the people that would benefit from them?
- ci5er 11y ago
  > What about the people who need the product but can't afford it? They can wait 7~10 years, no? Patents are not forever. Is your theory that billions should be allocated (somehow) to researching a list of things that some people somewhere need with no prospect of recouping that expense? And, if so, of the thousands of things that people think they need, which ones get priority? Bill Gates may be doing some cool things in this direction, but he's not an infinite resource.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > They can wait 7~10 years, no? Patents are not forever. For people with many illnesses it means death (literally, "forever"). For others, it means 7-10 years of suffering or debilitating illness. Regarding your other questions/points, I wonder if I misunderstand them because the answers are very well-known. Sorry if I'm missing something: > Is your theory that billions should be allocated (somehow) to researching a list of things that some people somewhere need with no prospect of recouping that expense? The enterprise of science has proceeded for centuries on exactly this basis, and society (via government) has funded it successfully. Much of what you benefit from now was funded by fellow citizens, past and present. > of the thousands of things that people think they need, which ones get priority? There is no definitive solution, of course, but this issue has long been addressesed by funding organizations such as the NSF, NIH, etc.

by ci5er 11y ago

dave_sullivan 11y ago

Sure, so instead of messing with messy market risk, better to patent first and not commercialize. Then sue the hell out of anyone that tries (or bury whatever the idea behind the patent, because I filed the patent, so if I can't have it, fuck 'em. It's my natural right.) Then, start a fund that simply buys the patents and "defends them" because I can get investors a 15% return from legal extortion (as opposed to illegal extortion which is higher risk/higher reward and less scalable.) Those investors will make me rich and give me lots of cool inventor awards and fancy dinners, so it all looks super legit. And make sure to hire lobbyists, because they're pretty good at making sure a good thing doesn't die.

ci5er 11y ago
Step 1: Be Nathan Myhrvold? The world is certainly moving more quickly than it used to, and maybe 20 years is too long for patent protection. The alternative to utilization of a patented technology is to keep doing what you have been doing. Many people certainly do. The the patent expires about 10 years (or less) from the time the technology is made available to the market. Is that a problem? Seriously - I don't know. It doesn't seem to be (to me), but maybe the timeline is too long?
- dave_sullivan 11y ago
  Yes, it's a problem because it causes artificial distortions on the market due to the technology not being available widely. You could argue the patent gets assigned it's fair market value because it is offered to license, but monopolies do not price well. It has nothing to do with "protecting the little guy" and in fact protects no one except for non-violent gangsters. You pay them for protection, the courts pay for their protection, and technological progress slows down because engineering around patents becomes a thing. Look: if you're pro-patents, fine, just realize how the money machine works. In practice, it's about making money and maintaining the power to do so, nothing deeper than that.
  - ci5er 11y ago
    I don't know. If they priced it at $1B per use, and nobody bought it, it would still be available for 3rd party replication 10 years after it hit the market. This isn't right topic thread for this discussion; I apologize.
  - z3t4 11y ago
    If there was no patent system, you would keep all your ideas and research secret. And that would hinder advances in science, as people would keep discoveries to themselves.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > If there was no patent system, you would keep all your ideas and research secret. And that would hinder advances in science, as people would keep discoveries to themselves. What about all the open knowledge and technology, such as most of what's published in scientific journals? Was Einstein's physics research hindered because he didn't patent relativity? Watson and Crick? Norman Borlaug? Think of all the open source computer innovations that have been given away and continue to be (are you excited about Rust?).

datashovel 11y ago

I agree that it seems, by today's standards, a non-issue. And in reality perhaps it is just my active imagination that is the enemy here. Although I would posit that though 7-10 years seems like a reasonable timeframe to most people today, it will probably appear to be a lifetime to future generations. If you really think about it, how long do Cell Phones last on the market before they're no longer a threat commercially? If I had to put a number to it I'd say no more than 1 year. After that you better have something new, and hopefully patented to prevent competition. Now amplify that by 2x, maybe 3x, or 10x. Now perhaps only the patent holder has legal rights to experiment on a given range of problems (given the nature of the patent). I imagine if someone plays their cards right, and hits the "patent lottery", you end up with a "waterfall-effect", or in other words, centuries worth of patents by a single entity with no end in sight. Perhaps those in the field recognize that biology is just as diverse if not more diverse than most other fields. And my concern could be a red herring. I, personally, have no doubt that the field of biology is enormously diverse, and in most academic settings I'd consider this pretty much a non-issue. I think the over-arching fear is the US has nominated 9 people, none of whom are likely to know a significant amount about genetic engineering, to decide (in essence) the fate of genetic engineering and the "patentability" of specific inventions / discoveries. What I think the field of genetic engineering may need in its future, is the equivalent of a Linus Torvalds in their field. Someone who will cut through the BS, and donate the overwhelming majority of their work / research to the public domain to prevent or reduce the possibility of some calamitous scenario from unfolding.

ci5er 11y ago
The 20-years-from-file is a recent change. It used to be 17-years-from-grant. The timelines can be dealt with statutorily. I have no doubt that large amounts of biological data will be freely available to the market. And many foundational techniques (such as PCR, and now CRISPR) have quite a long useful lifespan. It isn't as if digital cellular telephony wasn't known before Nokia, just that some vendors (Motorola) misjudged and stuck with analog too long after the cost calculus changed. You raise an interesting question about waterfall effects. I'll have to ponder this some. In any case, say this does happen - the patent holder gets very rich (fairly or not) and the world gets a constant stream of always better innovative biotech. I don't understand how the world suffers whether the beneficiary of the dollar flow is one entity or a hundred.

spb 11y ago

> So, during this window, if you over price it, it isn't better/faster/cheaper. If it is priced competively, people benefit. The only "losers" are those that have to wait 10 years to rip off your research and clone your product and undersell you. I'm pretty sure this is why we're only seeing consumer VR now, despite the fact that we had most of this technology in 1995. Patent-wise, it wasn't safe to rip off until now. This is also (again, I suspect) why the current input situation is so underwhelming: anything exciting is going to reply on technology developed in the last 10 years that the R&D firms are pricing at self-defeatingly high cost.

onewaystreet 11y ago
We're seeing VR now because smartphones have made the access to small HD screens abundant and relatively cheap.
- Ankaios 11y ago
  And accelerometers & gyros. Also processors & GPUs, as my uncle comment sent. All of these being cheap and high quality is why personal VR currently has a shot at happening.
ci5er 11y ago
Maybe. An SGI Workstation level device that fits in the palm of your hand and costs <$30,000 may have something to do with it. I don't think that this is necessarily evil patent squatting stuff. I was at Motorola for a while in the 90s, we looked at the patent landscape - knew how to go around them - and we just couldn't make the numbers work for a consumer play.

hackuser 11y ago

> Once the market decides that it is a better/faster/cheaper tool than the competitive product/process/genome, you've got, what, 7~10 years? Maybe? This assumes the "market" makes a good decision. It's not a God, it's just tool. Like any tool, it works well in some situations and not in others. One thing it's not good at is allocating resources based on need rather than on wealth. What about the people who need the product but can't afford it? What about the innovations that are delayed, and the innovations based on those innovations, and all the people that would benefit from them?

ci5er 11y ago
> What about the people who need the product but can't afford it? They can wait 7~10 years, no? Patents are not forever. Is your theory that billions should be allocated (somehow) to researching a list of things that some people somewhere need with no prospect of recouping that expense? And, if so, of the thousands of things that people think they need, which ones get priority? Bill Gates may be doing some cool things in this direction, but he's not an infinite resource.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > They can wait 7~10 years, no? Patents are not forever. For people with many illnesses it means death (literally, "forever"). For others, it means 7-10 years of suffering or debilitating illness. Regarding your other questions/points, I wonder if I misunderstand them because the answers are very well-known. Sorry if I'm missing something: > Is your theory that billions should be allocated (somehow) to researching a list of things that some people somewhere need with no prospect of recouping that expense? The enterprise of science has proceeded for centuries on exactly this basis, and society (via government) has funded it successfully. Much of what you benefit from now was funded by fellow citizens, past and present. > of the thousands of things that people think they need, which ones get priority? There is no definitive solution, of course, but this issue has long been addressesed by funding organizations such as the NSF, NIH, etc.